In the majority of wealthy countries, governmental care for the sick and the poor is a given. Yet in the United States, still the world’s wealthiest nation, this has never been the case. Thursday’s Senate vote on President Barack Obama’s health-care reform bill may finally have changed this. However, though both houses have now passed their own versions of the bill, the January legislative consolidation could still see lawmakers force some highly damaging changes to the president’s ambitions.
There are two notable elements to the long and tortured progress of this legislation, the introduction of which was a key plank of Obama’s election campaign. The first is that a great many of the roadblocks along the way were erected by members of the president’s own Democrat party. The second is the virulence with which Republican politicians, despite their minority in both Houses of Congress have fought the proposed legislation.
Part of the trouble the administration has had from Democrats is shameful. The party is far from the homogenous political machine that typifies many democracies. There was a left-of-center bloc, whose opposition was triggered when key original elements in the bill such as the “public option” that would have provided European-style cradle-to-grave health cover were watered down. These people protested they would rather have no health-care legislation than a poor compromise. At least their stance had some honor. The shame accrues to those Democrat congressmen who made their support conditional upon government’s financial support for pet projects in their home states. This may indeed be the way the US legislative process so often works. Nevertheless, this was a pivotal national issue on which a Democrat president had been elected. Did congressmen, therefore, really have the right to exploit the administration so? Many would say not.
At least the Republicans were ostensibly true to their conviction that universal health care is wicked socialist big government that will rob Americans of their fundamental freedoms. They clearly chose to forget that in his panic-stricken fight against terrorism, Republican President George W. Bush tore up personal freedom in the cause of Homeland Security. The Republicans are perfectly content to see some 31 million fellow Americans devoid of all health care save that available from charities. They also have no problem with the withdrawal of private health insurance for those unfortunate enough to fall ill and actually need it.
But then Republicans are always on the side of Big Business and US health care certainly is Big Business, earning its practitioners a staggering $2.2 trillion last year. Per capita, Americans pay twice as much for health care as the average citizen in rich industrialized nations but they are not notably twice as healthy. On that basis the US health industry is seriously overcharging its customers. A well-audited government-funded public health care option as Obama wants would almost certainly slash the industry’s indecent profits across the board from pharmaceutical companies to care and treatment providers. This, and not the fear of creeping socialism is really why the Republicans have fought the legislation so bitterly every step of the way.
